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[Locke Review of Boyd, Connoly, Cornwell, Diment
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> http://www.uwo.ca/modlang/ailc/current/RevArticlesNabokov.htm
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> LR/RL
> Copyright © by the International Comparative Literature Association. All rights reserved.
>
> Copyright © par l▓Association Internationale de Litt?rature Compar?e. Tous droits r?serv?s.
>
> Literary Research/Recherche litt?raire 17.33 (Spring-Summer/printemps-?t?, 2000) 96-104
>
>
>
> Charles Lock
>
> University of Copenhagen
>
> Nabokov▓s Centenary: A V-shaped Hereafter
>
>
>
>
>
> Brian Boyd, Nabokov▓s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999; xii+303 pp.; ISBN: 0691009597 (bk.); LC call no.:
> PS3527.A15P3334;
>
> Julian W. Connolly, ed., Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999; xiv+250 pp.; ISBN: 0521632838 (bk.); LC
> call no.: PG3476.N3Z776;
>
> Neil Cornwell, Writers and Their Work: Vladimir Nabokov. Plymouth (U.K.): Northcote House (in association with the British Council), 1999;
> xvii+142 pp.; ISBN: 074630868x (bk.); LC call no.: in process;
>
> Galya Diment, Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel. Seattle & London: U of Washington P, 1997; xii+202 pp.; ISBN: 0295976349; LC call
> no.: PS3527.A15P5936
>
>
> The centenary of the birth of Vladimir Nabokov has seen the predictable emergence of a number of monographs and collections of essays, and more must
> be expected: three major conferences held in 1999, all on sites of Nabokovian resonance √ Ithaca, Cambridge and St. Petersburg √ will yield their
> proceedings.
>
>
> Neil Cornwell▓s task is explicitly modest and introductory, for his volume belongs to the revamped British Council series ⌠Writers and their Work■: to what
> extent inclusion in this series marks a claim to Britishness, and is therefore in the present case an act of appropriation, is not clear. Happily, Cornwell is a
> Slavic specialist who gives due measure to each of the two conjured tongues, and who is particularly interesting on the topic of what George Steiner once
> (1972) defined as the ⌠extraterritorial■: linguistic displacement as a distinctive feature of twentieth-century writing, from Conrad to Nabokov, Beckett, Borges
> and, more recently, Brodsky. Cornwell gives much more than one expects from such a volume as this: that Nabokov▓s trope of the ⌠knight▓s move■ is taken
> (without acknowledgement) from his contemporary, the Formalist V.I. Shklovsky; that Nabokov▓s study of [end of page 96] Gogol, published in 1943, was
> ⌠seemingly the first book on Gogol to appear in English■; that Zembla is invoked not only by Pope but also by Defoe and Hawthorne; that ⌠hazel shade■ is a
> phrase that occurs frequently in English poetry, and that Timon of Athens is not the unique source of the phrase ⌠pale fire.■
>
>
> In a slim book no apology need be made for omission, yet it seems an odd choice for Cornwell to devote a chapter each to Ada or Ardor and Look at the
> Harlequins! √ neither text suitable for beginners √and give no attention at all to Pnin. Here perhaps one detects a whiff of emulous wit, for it is of course
> Pnin▓s fate to be ignored, or √his craft √to elude attention. Not always, however: Galya Diment▓s Pniniad is a strange double-focussed work, at once an
> attempt to illuminate Pnin through a claim to have identified the so-called ⌠real-life■ model, and a study of Marc Szeftel whose value and pathos are not
> exclusively reflected from Pnin: Szeftel was, as it may cruelly be said, a pale fire in his own right. As a portrait of an academic by default, of a Russian Jew
> who in emigration found university teaching the least uncongenial of options, this story has an ordinariness within which other lives may resonate. A Cornell
> colleague described Szeftel as Ain outlook a person far more strange √foreign, shall I say, √than anyone who had previously been a member of our
> department.■ Galya Diment introduces a Pninian note of her own when she challenges this recollection with the observation that in 1945 there were ⌠at least
> three other foreigners■ in Cornell▓s History Department: two Englishmen and a Dutchman.
>
> Szeftel▓s hour should have arrived with the great scholarly project in which he was to collaborate with both Nabokov and Roman Jakobson: the translation of
> Slovo o polku Igoreve as The Song of Igor▓s Campaign, with historical commentary and philological apparatus devoted to the demonstration that this poem
> was genuinely medieval and not a Romantic forgery in the manner of Ossian. The project made slow progress through the 1950▓s and was terminated in
> 1957 when Nabokov found out, from Harry Levin, that Jakobson had sabotaged Nabokov▓s chance of being appointed to Harvard▓s Department of Modern
> Languages, as a teacher of Russian literature who was also a Russian writer, with the not-to-be-forgotten words: ⌠I do respect very much the elephant, but
> would you give him the chair of Zoology?■ Nabokov ended the collaboration forthwith, and then brought out his ⌠plain text■ translation in 1960, without the
> scholarly or editorial apparatus, and without even a mention of Jakobson or Szeftel as former collaborators. Szeftel was by then the leading authority on the
> historical background to The Song of Igor▓s Campaign: his life▓s scholarship had come to nothing, and the commentary was never to be published.
>
>
> To what degree Szeftel may have served as a ⌠model■ for Pnin is one of those questions that would seem to belong to another age. The attempt to
> demonstrate the resemblance constitutes quite the least interesting aspect of this book. Yet without [end of page 97] that attempt, that alibi or apology, it is
> unlikely that this book would have found a publisher. The more we learn about Szeftel, of his wretched decline into self-pity and envy as, now ⌠exiled■ once
> more, from Ithaca to Seattle, he realizes that he never counted for much in Nabokov▓s life, the more we may come to admire Professor Pnin. Naive readers of
> that novel √ who include blurb-writers and other paratextual parasites √accept the narrator▓s demeaning presentation of the protagonist; careful readers will
> admire the cunning and wit with which Pnin eludes his narrator and even, at the plot▓s necessary end, his author. Szeftel was apparently blest with little wit
> and less luck. Yet this modest biographical account has its interest: it exposes the mean pettinesses of quotidian academic life, not the awards and
> celebrations, the scandals and humiliations in the public domain, but the private miseries, unshared and unacknowledged. When Szeftel learns about the
> Festschrift presented to Jakobson on his seventieth birthday, in three volumes with some two hundred contributors, he confides to his diary: ⌠The fact that no
> Festschrift has appeared to honor me is different, but not to be asked to participate in honoring a fellow-scholar with whom I have been connected for so
> many years.... Forgetfulness, oversight?■ This book is not easy reading, and it is a tribute to Diment▓s tact and circumspection that it is bearable at all. This
> work serves as a tribute not only to Szeftel but to the many other scholars whose lives have not even the tenuous link to a Nabokov to bring them into the
> light of our own mordant recognitions.
>
>
> Towards the end of his life, when invited to lecture on medieval Russian history, Szeftel would instead propose a lecture on Nabokov. As a scholar he
> considered himself to have failed; his claim to attention would rest on his friendship with his erstwhile colleague and fellow-?migr?. The reflections of Pale Fire
> are not so pale. The appearance of being a bit of a Kinbote is a risk to which anyone writing about Nabokov is exposed. And most exposed of all is Brian
> Boyd, whose monumental biography (1990-91) is impressively free of the sound of axes on this or the other shore. Hyperbole, however, tends to grind, and
> one might be grateful that in his monograph devoted to Pale Fire, Boyd does not repeat his praise of the 999 line ⌠poem■ contained in the novel: ⌠English
> poetry has few things better to offer than Pale Fire■ (Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991],440). There is now some
> moderation in the praise of Pale Fire but no ⌠concession■ that it should be treated as an ⌠image of a poem,■ if not as a pastiche; and Boyd▓s line in hyperbole
> is unabashed. Nabokov is matched against various writers √Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Perec √and each fails the test. (Only Shakespeare is a worthy
> rival). A by no means unusual instance tells us that time is played with in Pale Fire ⌠in a way far more thrilling and inventive, far more skeptical and yet more
> magical, than in the postured probings of Eliot▓s Four Quartets■ (206). Such extremes of praise, and [end of page 98] such predictable reciprocities of
> condemnation, are enough to instil scepticism among Nabokov▓s most fervent admirers.
>
> Nabokov▓s Pale Fire is a strange book, a monograph as long as its subject, yet rather more conventional in its layout. The layout of Pale Fire virtually
> prohibits an annotated text, and Boyd▓s book will certainly serve as a useful guide, a compendium and synthesis of much of the annotation and elucidation
> that Pale Fire has elicited. Unfortunately Boyd also has a polemical purpose, to present nothing less than an interpretation, and one moreover that explains
> ⌠what really happens and what is really at stake in Pale Fire■ (xii). There is a peculiar form of scholarly hubris by which an author seeks permission to cite and
> refute within his own text the comments of the publisher▓s reader, who in this case is Michael Wood, author of The Magician▓s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks
> of Fiction (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994). Boyd▓s argument is that the entire construction of Pale Fire can be attributed neither to Shade √ as Boyd had
> argued earlier √ nor to Kinbote, but to Shade▓s daughter Hazel who, after her death, works as a benevolent ghostly influence, dropping hints for both Shade
> and Kinbote: it is she who orchestrates the two texts, who conjures their two tongues into a single story: ⌠Hazel▓s spirit somehow inspires Kinbote with the idea
> of Zembla■ (173). Wood objects, and Boyd repeats the reader▓s report: ⌠Death itself is diminished, its horror is cancelled, and a desperate sentimentality
> beckons. It▓s as if Nahum Tate had decided to deal with Cordelia▓s death, not by removing it from his version of King Lear, but by bringing her back as a
> helpful spirit■ (257).
>
>
> This seems to me unanswerable and Boyd▓s attempt at refutation does nothing to mitigate the force of Wood▓s words: what belongs at most to the paratext
> has thus been incorporated into the text, and it has not been tamed. Boyd▓s is a curious rhetorical strategy, unnervingly close to Kinbotism. The opening
> sentence of Boyd▓s final paragraph epitomizes the nakedness of his appropriation of the mind and intentions of Nabokov, shamelessly without the cover of
> logic: ⌠Pale Fire shows how wrongly so many read Nabokov■ (261).
>
>
> I count myself among those many readers, in finding broad interpretations either frivolous or dull, or both. The fascination of Nabokov is entirely on the
> surface √where all fascination must be sought. And it is extraordinary how much of that surface can be ignored, overlooked or neglected even in a
> monograph as comprehensive and thorough as this. Boyd▓s argument begins with a statement of the obvious: ⌠Pale Fire consists of four parts,■ and lists the
> four parts as they are given on the contents page of the novel: Foreword, Poem, Commentary, Index. There is, however, on the page before the contents
> page, an epigraph from Boswell in which Johnson speaks about a young man who was running about town shooting cats. ⌠And then in a kindly reverie, he
> bethought himself of his own favourite cat, and said, ▒But Hodge shan▓t be shot: no, no, Hodge shall not be [end of page 99] shot.▓■ In Kinbote▓s commentary
> on line 894 we learn that Shade has ⌠been said to resemble at least four people,■ the first named of whom is Samuel Johnson. It is even hinted that the
> epigraph itself may have been selected and placed by Kinbote, who tells us (Commentary to line 172): ⌠In a black pocketbook that I fortunately have with me I
> find, jotted down, here and there, among various extracts that had happened to please me (a footnote from Boswell▓s Life of Dr. Johnson....) ....■ An
> interpretation of Pale Fire that makes not one mention of Boswell, Johnson, or Hodge is surely not, Sir, to be taken seriously.
>
>
> Thus one strikes an ungrateful note, quite inappropriate to much in Boyd▓s commentary. When Shade and Kinbote are on a walk, ⌠skirting Dulwich Forest,■
> Shade recalls the farmer▓s son who ⌠pointed and remarked informatively: ▒Here Papa pisses.▓■ Not content merely to note the allusion to Browning▓s ⌠Pippa
> Passes,■ Boyd finds in Mrs. Sutherland Orr▓s Handbook of 1892 an account of the origin of that poem in a walk taken by Browning Ain a wood near Dulwich.■
> ⌠My friend,■ Kinbote writes in the same paragraph, ⌠sparkled with quips, and marrowskies, and anecdotes■: Boyd omits to alert us here to the Index, where
> ⌠marrowsky■ is explained as ⌠a rudimentary spoonerism■ √e.g. Papa pisses √⌠from the name of a Russian diplomat of the early 19th century, Count
> Komarovski, famous at foreign courts for mispronouncing his own name √Makarovski, Macaronski, Skomorovski, etc.■ (Spoonerism is itself derived from the
> phonemic transpositions of the Warden of New College Oxford named Spooner).
>
>
> ⌠I find it staggering that readers can think someone as playfully generous as Nabokov is out to frustrate them,■ writes Boyd in Kinbotic tones. Such aloofness
> from ⌠readers■ certainly lends spice to the reader▓s pursuit of whatever Boyd fails to find. This reader finds it puzzling that Boyd does not appear to have
> recourse to the Oxford English Dictionary. Line 35 of the poem, ⌠Stilettos of a frozen stillicide,■ receives this comment from Kinbote: ⌠My dictionary defines
> [stillicide] as ⌠a succession of drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop. I remember having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas
> Hardy.■ Boyd refers us to Webster▓s for a definition, pointing out that Kinbote does not recall the exact poem, and that Nabokov offers the reader no help. In a
> footnote Boyd acknowledges that Michael Long (Marvell, Nabokov: Childhood and Arcadia [Oxford: Clarendon; London; New York: Oxford UP], 1984) ⌠was
> the first to note the source■ in Hardy▓s ⌠Friends Beyond■: ⌠In the muted, measured note/ Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave▓s stillicide.■
>
>
> One need not have waited till 1984. If, puzzled by the word ▒stillicide,▓ one had looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, one would have found the word
> described as ⌠now rare■ √ and Hardy▓s poem (from 1898) cited as the only example since the seventeenth century. This lends a certain uncanny focus to
> Robert Graves▓s not entirely reliable account of a conversation with Hardy in [end of page 100] August 1920, in which the latter protested against the critics
> who complained about Hardy▓s use of extraordinary words not to be found in any dictionary: ⌠Hardy then laughed a little. Once or twice recently he had
> looked up a word in the dictionary for fear of being again accused of coining, and found it there right enough - only to read on and discover that the sole
> authority quoted was himself....!■ (Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1929), ch. 28; the ⌠st-■ fascicle of the OED had been published in 1919.) Boyd
> manages to come to his own rescue, or mitigation: Webster▓s was the dictionary always open on Nabokov▓s table √ we even have a photograph (reproduced
> in American Years). It was only in December 1973 that Nabokov acquired his own set of the thirteen volumes of the OED (American Years, 622); but one is
> well-advised to assume his familiarity with a library set.
>
>
> Boyd draws our attention to the ⌠consonne /D▓appui, Echo▓s fey child■ (lines 965-66), for which Shade declares a special partiality just after having rhymed
> ⌠meant■ with ⌠cement.■ As Boyd notes √ and is the first to note √ the repetition of the poem▓s first line as its thousandth and last would close the whole with
> another consonne d▓appui:
>
>
> Trundling an empty barrow up the lane.
>
> [I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.]
>
>
>
>
> In the earlier instance we have further reinforcement of the consonne d▓appui(⌠supporting consonant,■ though ⌠intrusive consonant■ gives a fairer sense of its
> value, at least in English verse) with an internal rhyme in l. 965:
>
>
> The brain is drained
>
> And a brown ament, and the noun I meant
>
> To use but did not, dry on the cement.
>
>
> What is an ament, apart from being an unusual word that escapes entirely the notice of our interpreter? It means catkin, which links it to Kinbote, and to
> Gradus who hawks Cartesian devils ⌠during Catkin Week■ (comment on line 171); and to the ⌠muscat grape■ in the second line of Shade▓s poem ⌠The Sacred
> Tree■ cited by Kinbote in his comment on line 49, with the further remark: AI do not know if it is relevant or not but there is a cat-and-mouse game in the
> second line.■ The noun he meant to use instead of ament must be catkin: the OED tells us that George Eliot▓s Felix Holt contains the phrase ⌠catkined
> hazels■: somewhere in this game, Hodge may be lurking.
>
> ⌠Ament■ from Latin amentum, tail or catkin; ⌠amental■ can mean either ⌠catkin-bearing■ or, as a homonym from a different root, ⌠denying or lacking
> intelligence.■ According to the Supplement of the OED, the substantive ⌠ament■ [end of page 101] in the twentieth century has been used clinically to
> denote those who lack intelligence; the only non-clinical instance cited is from Walter de la Mare, writing in 1935. In 1938 Beckett, in Murphy, uses the
> adjective ⌠amental.■ Nabokov has ⌠ament■ as ⌠catkin■ in his early story ⌠Christmas■ (1921), or at least in its English version: ⌠slippery planks, flecked with
> aments.■ This double sense of ⌠ament■ creates a tenuous link between Nabokov and de la Mare. In 1942 Nabokov confessed to Edmund Wilson that his early
> poems ⌠are strongly influenced by the Georgian poets, Rupert Brooke, De la Mare, etc., by whom I was much fascinated at the time.■ This is cited by D.
> Barton Johnson in ⌠Vladimir Nabokov and Rupert Brooke,■ an essay in Nabokov and his Fiction. Barton Johnson sketches some of the links between Brooke
> and those poets most popular in Cambridge c. 1920, and is entirely persuasive in his claim that this formative time in Nabokov▓s life needs to be more
> thoroughly explored. Nabokov▓s familiarity with English Literature was acquired in three stages, of which we know much about the first √ from Nabokov▓s father
> and tutors in Russia √ and the last √in America, under the guidance of Edmund Wilson, Harry Levin and others. But of the Cambridge years we know very
> little; and in various ways Nabokov does his best to discourage enquiry. In 1922 Nabokov published an essay, ⌠Rupert Bruk,■ which has not even yet been
> translated into English. This essay is concerned with one poem in particular, entitled ⌠Life Beyond■ (its title not far from Hardy▓s ⌠Friends Beyond■), and it is in
> this essay that Nabokov first uses the word potustoronnost▓(the hereafter, the beyond), a word that Nabokov will use over fifty years later in his last novel,
> Look at the Harlequins! (1974). In 1979, in a preface to a posthumous collection of Nabokov▓s poetry, V?ra Nabokov claimed that potustoronnost▓ was the
> ⌠main theme■ of all his work. Cornwall laments the results of this intervention, pointing out that the theme had ⌠not gone completely unremarked [though] it
> had certainly not received the attention she felt to be its due. This shortfall has by now been made perhaps more than good, as something of an ▒otherworld▓
> bandwagon has been rolling for some time in Nabokov scholarship■ (Cornwell, 12). That bandwagon has been driven by Vladimir Alexandrov, author of
> Nabokov▓s Otherworld (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991), and it has made possible, even plausible, Boyd▓s sentimental reading of Pale Fire.
>
>
> One would like to think that V?ra Nabokov was merely playing with the idea of posterity, that now, after Nabokov▓s death, one is in the beyond for which he
> was writing. The fundamentalist line has however prevailed, and provided a master-alibi for subordinating textual details to grand and hazy interpretations.
> Connolly▓s volume is full of local illuminations and happily devoid of postured [end of page 102] probings into the hereafter. As the master taught us: ⌠Only
> myopia condones the blurry generalizations of ignorance■ (Strong Opinions, 168). The first essay is so myopic as to pose a severe test of the reader▓s faith.
> Gavriel Shapiro argues that Nabokov leaves traces of his names all through his texts, not just in the anagrams √ such as Vivian Darkbloom or Adam von
> Librikov √ that any child could make out, but also in hypograms distributed throughout a paragraph. Saussure▓s pursuit of onomastic anagrams in Latin
> poetry provides us with some sort of precursor for Shapiro▓s exercise. But Saussure did hold to the rule that sequence had to be maintained. Shapiro is
> subject to no such constraint, and is constantly amazed to discover, in what he regards as important sentences, all the characters that make up the name of
> Vladimir Nabokov, and sometimes Sirin as well. Such acronyms and lipograms are valid √ if that word can denote a contractual recognition between author,
> reader and other readers √ if they operate according to some system that excludes random replication of results. I astonish myself to notice that the last five
> words of the previous sentence form an acronym of their verdict on Shapiro▓s procedure; and that of the last six, the acronym expresses a likely consequence
> of hypogrammatic paranoia. On alphabetical iconicism, on the V and X and W that wing their way through the Nabokovian text, Shapiro is considerably more
> persuasive.
>
>
> Maxim Shrayer▓s essay on Jewish questions in Nabokov▓s life and art treats a difficult subject with delicacy and tolerance; Leona Toker treats the dead without
> too much respect, and joins the opposition to the School of the Hereafter. Gennady Barabtarlo addresses with some success the problem that we always
> encounter: how to reconcile the fascination of details with any sort of schematic reading. An extremely suggestive paragraph on Nabokov▓s objections to
> Dostoevsky leads on to Julian Connolly▓s treatment of the topic. While Connolly▓s discussion is largely thematic, Barabtarlo outlines the possibilities of a
> generic resolution of the conflict: that, as Nabokov said in his lectures, Dostoevsky was in the wrong genre: ⌠He seems to have been chosen by the destiny of
> Russian letters to become Russia▓s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.■ This is not very different from Bakhtin▓s observation
> that Dostoevsky▓s novels are Menippean satires. Maurice Couturier tries altogether too hard to squeeze Pale Fire into the mould of a novel with a ⌠single
> authorial figure.■ One realizes yet again the problematic nature of literary genres within the Russian tradition: that Eugene Onegin is subtitled ⌠a novel in
> verse,■ while War and Peace is declared by its author not to be a novel at all.
>
>
> Couturier▓s consideration of attempts to ⌠monologize■ Pale Fire reminds me of another textual element, like ament, unmentioned by Boyd, and, as far as I
> know, by every other annotator of or commentator on Pale Fire. This is the name of Jakob Gradus▓ maternal uncle, as revealed by Kinbote in the commentary
> on [end of page 103] line 17: ⌠His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protestant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle (Roman
> Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business.■ Here are
> two obvious puns, and a more subtle one. Jakob, the nephew of Roman, invokes a ripple of Roman son of Jakob. Equally obviously, Roman Tselo is a novel
> that is complete, whole, integral, intact. The root tselo is present in the Russian word for kiss, tselovat▓: the word is not merely imitative like English ⌠kiss■ but
> contains the idea of unity, of making whole. In the uncle▓s name we may hear not only a complete novel but also a kissing novel, and we may understand a
> ⌠kissing-novel■ to be like a kissing-gate, a gate that swings within a narrow enclosure, in either position forming an unbroken fence. The OED gives a
> definition that is clear, illuminating, even momentarily dazzling: ⌠a small gate swinging in a U- or V-shaped enclosure.■
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.uwo.ca/modlang/ailc/current/RevArticlesNabokov.htm
>
>
>
>
> LR/RL
> Copyright © by the International Comparative Literature Association. All rights reserved.
>
> Copyright © par l▓Association Internationale de Litt?rature Compar?e. Tous droits r?serv?s.
>
> Literary Research/Recherche litt?raire 17.33 (Spring-Summer/printemps-?t?, 2000) 96-104
>
>
>
> Charles Lock
>
> University of Copenhagen
>
> Nabokov▓s Centenary: A V-shaped Hereafter
>
>
>
>
>
> Brian Boyd, Nabokov▓s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999; xii+303 pp.; ISBN: 0691009597 (bk.); LC call no.:
> PS3527.A15P3334;
>
> Julian W. Connolly, ed., Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999; xiv+250 pp.; ISBN: 0521632838 (bk.); LC
> call no.: PG3476.N3Z776;
>
> Neil Cornwell, Writers and Their Work: Vladimir Nabokov. Plymouth (U.K.): Northcote House (in association with the British Council), 1999;
> xvii+142 pp.; ISBN: 074630868x (bk.); LC call no.: in process;
>
> Galya Diment, Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel. Seattle & London: U of Washington P, 1997; xii+202 pp.; ISBN: 0295976349; LC call
> no.: PS3527.A15P5936
>
>
> The centenary of the birth of Vladimir Nabokov has seen the predictable emergence of a number of monographs and collections of essays, and more must
> be expected: three major conferences held in 1999, all on sites of Nabokovian resonance √ Ithaca, Cambridge and St. Petersburg √ will yield their
> proceedings.
>
>
> Neil Cornwell▓s task is explicitly modest and introductory, for his volume belongs to the revamped British Council series ⌠Writers and their Work■: to what
> extent inclusion in this series marks a claim to Britishness, and is therefore in the present case an act of appropriation, is not clear. Happily, Cornwell is a
> Slavic specialist who gives due measure to each of the two conjured tongues, and who is particularly interesting on the topic of what George Steiner once
> (1972) defined as the ⌠extraterritorial■: linguistic displacement as a distinctive feature of twentieth-century writing, from Conrad to Nabokov, Beckett, Borges
> and, more recently, Brodsky. Cornwell gives much more than one expects from such a volume as this: that Nabokov▓s trope of the ⌠knight▓s move■ is taken
> (without acknowledgement) from his contemporary, the Formalist V.I. Shklovsky; that Nabokov▓s study of [end of page 96] Gogol, published in 1943, was
> ⌠seemingly the first book on Gogol to appear in English■; that Zembla is invoked not only by Pope but also by Defoe and Hawthorne; that ⌠hazel shade■ is a
> phrase that occurs frequently in English poetry, and that Timon of Athens is not the unique source of the phrase ⌠pale fire.■
>
>
> In a slim book no apology need be made for omission, yet it seems an odd choice for Cornwell to devote a chapter each to Ada or Ardor and Look at the
> Harlequins! √ neither text suitable for beginners √and give no attention at all to Pnin. Here perhaps one detects a whiff of emulous wit, for it is of course
> Pnin▓s fate to be ignored, or √his craft √to elude attention. Not always, however: Galya Diment▓s Pniniad is a strange double-focussed work, at once an
> attempt to illuminate Pnin through a claim to have identified the so-called ⌠real-life■ model, and a study of Marc Szeftel whose value and pathos are not
> exclusively reflected from Pnin: Szeftel was, as it may cruelly be said, a pale fire in his own right. As a portrait of an academic by default, of a Russian Jew
> who in emigration found university teaching the least uncongenial of options, this story has an ordinariness within which other lives may resonate. A Cornell
> colleague described Szeftel as Ain outlook a person far more strange √foreign, shall I say, √than anyone who had previously been a member of our
> department.■ Galya Diment introduces a Pninian note of her own when she challenges this recollection with the observation that in 1945 there were ⌠at least
> three other foreigners■ in Cornell▓s History Department: two Englishmen and a Dutchman.
>
> Szeftel▓s hour should have arrived with the great scholarly project in which he was to collaborate with both Nabokov and Roman Jakobson: the translation of
> Slovo o polku Igoreve as The Song of Igor▓s Campaign, with historical commentary and philological apparatus devoted to the demonstration that this poem
> was genuinely medieval and not a Romantic forgery in the manner of Ossian. The project made slow progress through the 1950▓s and was terminated in
> 1957 when Nabokov found out, from Harry Levin, that Jakobson had sabotaged Nabokov▓s chance of being appointed to Harvard▓s Department of Modern
> Languages, as a teacher of Russian literature who was also a Russian writer, with the not-to-be-forgotten words: ⌠I do respect very much the elephant, but
> would you give him the chair of Zoology?■ Nabokov ended the collaboration forthwith, and then brought out his ⌠plain text■ translation in 1960, without the
> scholarly or editorial apparatus, and without even a mention of Jakobson or Szeftel as former collaborators. Szeftel was by then the leading authority on the
> historical background to The Song of Igor▓s Campaign: his life▓s scholarship had come to nothing, and the commentary was never to be published.
>
>
> To what degree Szeftel may have served as a ⌠model■ for Pnin is one of those questions that would seem to belong to another age. The attempt to
> demonstrate the resemblance constitutes quite the least interesting aspect of this book. Yet without [end of page 97] that attempt, that alibi or apology, it is
> unlikely that this book would have found a publisher. The more we learn about Szeftel, of his wretched decline into self-pity and envy as, now ⌠exiled■ once
> more, from Ithaca to Seattle, he realizes that he never counted for much in Nabokov▓s life, the more we may come to admire Professor Pnin. Naive readers of
> that novel √ who include blurb-writers and other paratextual parasites √accept the narrator▓s demeaning presentation of the protagonist; careful readers will
> admire the cunning and wit with which Pnin eludes his narrator and even, at the plot▓s necessary end, his author. Szeftel was apparently blest with little wit
> and less luck. Yet this modest biographical account has its interest: it exposes the mean pettinesses of quotidian academic life, not the awards and
> celebrations, the scandals and humiliations in the public domain, but the private miseries, unshared and unacknowledged. When Szeftel learns about the
> Festschrift presented to Jakobson on his seventieth birthday, in three volumes with some two hundred contributors, he confides to his diary: ⌠The fact that no
> Festschrift has appeared to honor me is different, but not to be asked to participate in honoring a fellow-scholar with whom I have been connected for so
> many years.... Forgetfulness, oversight?■ This book is not easy reading, and it is a tribute to Diment▓s tact and circumspection that it is bearable at all. This
> work serves as a tribute not only to Szeftel but to the many other scholars whose lives have not even the tenuous link to a Nabokov to bring them into the
> light of our own mordant recognitions.
>
>
> Towards the end of his life, when invited to lecture on medieval Russian history, Szeftel would instead propose a lecture on Nabokov. As a scholar he
> considered himself to have failed; his claim to attention would rest on his friendship with his erstwhile colleague and fellow-?migr?. The reflections of Pale Fire
> are not so pale. The appearance of being a bit of a Kinbote is a risk to which anyone writing about Nabokov is exposed. And most exposed of all is Brian
> Boyd, whose monumental biography (1990-91) is impressively free of the sound of axes on this or the other shore. Hyperbole, however, tends to grind, and
> one might be grateful that in his monograph devoted to Pale Fire, Boyd does not repeat his praise of the 999 line ⌠poem■ contained in the novel: ⌠English
> poetry has few things better to offer than Pale Fire■ (Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991],440). There is now some
> moderation in the praise of Pale Fire but no ⌠concession■ that it should be treated as an ⌠image of a poem,■ if not as a pastiche; and Boyd▓s line in hyperbole
> is unabashed. Nabokov is matched against various writers √Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Perec √and each fails the test. (Only Shakespeare is a worthy
> rival). A by no means unusual instance tells us that time is played with in Pale Fire ⌠in a way far more thrilling and inventive, far more skeptical and yet more
> magical, than in the postured probings of Eliot▓s Four Quartets■ (206). Such extremes of praise, and [end of page 98] such predictable reciprocities of
> condemnation, are enough to instil scepticism among Nabokov▓s most fervent admirers.
>
> Nabokov▓s Pale Fire is a strange book, a monograph as long as its subject, yet rather more conventional in its layout. The layout of Pale Fire virtually
> prohibits an annotated text, and Boyd▓s book will certainly serve as a useful guide, a compendium and synthesis of much of the annotation and elucidation
> that Pale Fire has elicited. Unfortunately Boyd also has a polemical purpose, to present nothing less than an interpretation, and one moreover that explains
> ⌠what really happens and what is really at stake in Pale Fire■ (xii). There is a peculiar form of scholarly hubris by which an author seeks permission to cite and
> refute within his own text the comments of the publisher▓s reader, who in this case is Michael Wood, author of The Magician▓s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks
> of Fiction (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994). Boyd▓s argument is that the entire construction of Pale Fire can be attributed neither to Shade √ as Boyd had
> argued earlier √ nor to Kinbote, but to Shade▓s daughter Hazel who, after her death, works as a benevolent ghostly influence, dropping hints for both Shade
> and Kinbote: it is she who orchestrates the two texts, who conjures their two tongues into a single story: ⌠Hazel▓s spirit somehow inspires Kinbote with the idea
> of Zembla■ (173). Wood objects, and Boyd repeats the reader▓s report: ⌠Death itself is diminished, its horror is cancelled, and a desperate sentimentality
> beckons. It▓s as if Nahum Tate had decided to deal with Cordelia▓s death, not by removing it from his version of King Lear, but by bringing her back as a
> helpful spirit■ (257).
>
>
> This seems to me unanswerable and Boyd▓s attempt at refutation does nothing to mitigate the force of Wood▓s words: what belongs at most to the paratext
> has thus been incorporated into the text, and it has not been tamed. Boyd▓s is a curious rhetorical strategy, unnervingly close to Kinbotism. The opening
> sentence of Boyd▓s final paragraph epitomizes the nakedness of his appropriation of the mind and intentions of Nabokov, shamelessly without the cover of
> logic: ⌠Pale Fire shows how wrongly so many read Nabokov■ (261).
>
>
> I count myself among those many readers, in finding broad interpretations either frivolous or dull, or both. The fascination of Nabokov is entirely on the
> surface √where all fascination must be sought. And it is extraordinary how much of that surface can be ignored, overlooked or neglected even in a
> monograph as comprehensive and thorough as this. Boyd▓s argument begins with a statement of the obvious: ⌠Pale Fire consists of four parts,■ and lists the
> four parts as they are given on the contents page of the novel: Foreword, Poem, Commentary, Index. There is, however, on the page before the contents
> page, an epigraph from Boswell in which Johnson speaks about a young man who was running about town shooting cats. ⌠And then in a kindly reverie, he
> bethought himself of his own favourite cat, and said, ▒But Hodge shan▓t be shot: no, no, Hodge shall not be [end of page 99] shot.▓■ In Kinbote▓s commentary
> on line 894 we learn that Shade has ⌠been said to resemble at least four people,■ the first named of whom is Samuel Johnson. It is even hinted that the
> epigraph itself may have been selected and placed by Kinbote, who tells us (Commentary to line 172): ⌠In a black pocketbook that I fortunately have with me I
> find, jotted down, here and there, among various extracts that had happened to please me (a footnote from Boswell▓s Life of Dr. Johnson....) ....■ An
> interpretation of Pale Fire that makes not one mention of Boswell, Johnson, or Hodge is surely not, Sir, to be taken seriously.
>
>
> Thus one strikes an ungrateful note, quite inappropriate to much in Boyd▓s commentary. When Shade and Kinbote are on a walk, ⌠skirting Dulwich Forest,■
> Shade recalls the farmer▓s son who ⌠pointed and remarked informatively: ▒Here Papa pisses.▓■ Not content merely to note the allusion to Browning▓s ⌠Pippa
> Passes,■ Boyd finds in Mrs. Sutherland Orr▓s Handbook of 1892 an account of the origin of that poem in a walk taken by Browning Ain a wood near Dulwich.■
> ⌠My friend,■ Kinbote writes in the same paragraph, ⌠sparkled with quips, and marrowskies, and anecdotes■: Boyd omits to alert us here to the Index, where
> ⌠marrowsky■ is explained as ⌠a rudimentary spoonerism■ √e.g. Papa pisses √⌠from the name of a Russian diplomat of the early 19th century, Count
> Komarovski, famous at foreign courts for mispronouncing his own name √Makarovski, Macaronski, Skomorovski, etc.■ (Spoonerism is itself derived from the
> phonemic transpositions of the Warden of New College Oxford named Spooner).
>
>
> ⌠I find it staggering that readers can think someone as playfully generous as Nabokov is out to frustrate them,■ writes Boyd in Kinbotic tones. Such aloofness
> from ⌠readers■ certainly lends spice to the reader▓s pursuit of whatever Boyd fails to find. This reader finds it puzzling that Boyd does not appear to have
> recourse to the Oxford English Dictionary. Line 35 of the poem, ⌠Stilettos of a frozen stillicide,■ receives this comment from Kinbote: ⌠My dictionary defines
> [stillicide] as ⌠a succession of drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop. I remember having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas
> Hardy.■ Boyd refers us to Webster▓s for a definition, pointing out that Kinbote does not recall the exact poem, and that Nabokov offers the reader no help. In a
> footnote Boyd acknowledges that Michael Long (Marvell, Nabokov: Childhood and Arcadia [Oxford: Clarendon; London; New York: Oxford UP], 1984) ⌠was
> the first to note the source■ in Hardy▓s ⌠Friends Beyond■: ⌠In the muted, measured note/ Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave▓s stillicide.■
>
>
> One need not have waited till 1984. If, puzzled by the word ▒stillicide,▓ one had looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, one would have found the word
> described as ⌠now rare■ √ and Hardy▓s poem (from 1898) cited as the only example since the seventeenth century. This lends a certain uncanny focus to
> Robert Graves▓s not entirely reliable account of a conversation with Hardy in [end of page 100] August 1920, in which the latter protested against the critics
> who complained about Hardy▓s use of extraordinary words not to be found in any dictionary: ⌠Hardy then laughed a little. Once or twice recently he had
> looked up a word in the dictionary for fear of being again accused of coining, and found it there right enough - only to read on and discover that the sole
> authority quoted was himself....!■ (Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1929), ch. 28; the ⌠st-■ fascicle of the OED had been published in 1919.) Boyd
> manages to come to his own rescue, or mitigation: Webster▓s was the dictionary always open on Nabokov▓s table √ we even have a photograph (reproduced
> in American Years). It was only in December 1973 that Nabokov acquired his own set of the thirteen volumes of the OED (American Years, 622); but one is
> well-advised to assume his familiarity with a library set.
>
>
> Boyd draws our attention to the ⌠consonne /D▓appui, Echo▓s fey child■ (lines 965-66), for which Shade declares a special partiality just after having rhymed
> ⌠meant■ with ⌠cement.■ As Boyd notes √ and is the first to note √ the repetition of the poem▓s first line as its thousandth and last would close the whole with
> another consonne d▓appui:
>
>
> Trundling an empty barrow up the lane.
>
> [I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.]
>
>
>
>
> In the earlier instance we have further reinforcement of the consonne d▓appui(⌠supporting consonant,■ though ⌠intrusive consonant■ gives a fairer sense of its
> value, at least in English verse) with an internal rhyme in l. 965:
>
>
> The brain is drained
>
> And a brown ament, and the noun I meant
>
> To use but did not, dry on the cement.
>
>
> What is an ament, apart from being an unusual word that escapes entirely the notice of our interpreter? It means catkin, which links it to Kinbote, and to
> Gradus who hawks Cartesian devils ⌠during Catkin Week■ (comment on line 171); and to the ⌠muscat grape■ in the second line of Shade▓s poem ⌠The Sacred
> Tree■ cited by Kinbote in his comment on line 49, with the further remark: AI do not know if it is relevant or not but there is a cat-and-mouse game in the
> second line.■ The noun he meant to use instead of ament must be catkin: the OED tells us that George Eliot▓s Felix Holt contains the phrase ⌠catkined
> hazels■: somewhere in this game, Hodge may be lurking.
>
> ⌠Ament■ from Latin amentum, tail or catkin; ⌠amental■ can mean either ⌠catkin-bearing■ or, as a homonym from a different root, ⌠denying or lacking
> intelligence.■ According to the Supplement of the OED, the substantive ⌠ament■ [end of page 101] in the twentieth century has been used clinically to
> denote those who lack intelligence; the only non-clinical instance cited is from Walter de la Mare, writing in 1935. In 1938 Beckett, in Murphy, uses the
> adjective ⌠amental.■ Nabokov has ⌠ament■ as ⌠catkin■ in his early story ⌠Christmas■ (1921), or at least in its English version: ⌠slippery planks, flecked with
> aments.■ This double sense of ⌠ament■ creates a tenuous link between Nabokov and de la Mare. In 1942 Nabokov confessed to Edmund Wilson that his early
> poems ⌠are strongly influenced by the Georgian poets, Rupert Brooke, De la Mare, etc., by whom I was much fascinated at the time.■ This is cited by D.
> Barton Johnson in ⌠Vladimir Nabokov and Rupert Brooke,■ an essay in Nabokov and his Fiction. Barton Johnson sketches some of the links between Brooke
> and those poets most popular in Cambridge c. 1920, and is entirely persuasive in his claim that this formative time in Nabokov▓s life needs to be more
> thoroughly explored. Nabokov▓s familiarity with English Literature was acquired in three stages, of which we know much about the first √ from Nabokov▓s father
> and tutors in Russia √ and the last √in America, under the guidance of Edmund Wilson, Harry Levin and others. But of the Cambridge years we know very
> little; and in various ways Nabokov does his best to discourage enquiry. In 1922 Nabokov published an essay, ⌠Rupert Bruk,■ which has not even yet been
> translated into English. This essay is concerned with one poem in particular, entitled ⌠Life Beyond■ (its title not far from Hardy▓s ⌠Friends Beyond■), and it is in
> this essay that Nabokov first uses the word potustoronnost▓(the hereafter, the beyond), a word that Nabokov will use over fifty years later in his last novel,
> Look at the Harlequins! (1974). In 1979, in a preface to a posthumous collection of Nabokov▓s poetry, V?ra Nabokov claimed that potustoronnost▓ was the
> ⌠main theme■ of all his work. Cornwall laments the results of this intervention, pointing out that the theme had ⌠not gone completely unremarked [though] it
> had certainly not received the attention she felt to be its due. This shortfall has by now been made perhaps more than good, as something of an ▒otherworld▓
> bandwagon has been rolling for some time in Nabokov scholarship■ (Cornwell, 12). That bandwagon has been driven by Vladimir Alexandrov, author of
> Nabokov▓s Otherworld (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991), and it has made possible, even plausible, Boyd▓s sentimental reading of Pale Fire.
>
>
> One would like to think that V?ra Nabokov was merely playing with the idea of posterity, that now, after Nabokov▓s death, one is in the beyond for which he
> was writing. The fundamentalist line has however prevailed, and provided a master-alibi for subordinating textual details to grand and hazy interpretations.
> Connolly▓s volume is full of local illuminations and happily devoid of postured [end of page 102] probings into the hereafter. As the master taught us: ⌠Only
> myopia condones the blurry generalizations of ignorance■ (Strong Opinions, 168). The first essay is so myopic as to pose a severe test of the reader▓s faith.
> Gavriel Shapiro argues that Nabokov leaves traces of his names all through his texts, not just in the anagrams √ such as Vivian Darkbloom or Adam von
> Librikov √ that any child could make out, but also in hypograms distributed throughout a paragraph. Saussure▓s pursuit of onomastic anagrams in Latin
> poetry provides us with some sort of precursor for Shapiro▓s exercise. But Saussure did hold to the rule that sequence had to be maintained. Shapiro is
> subject to no such constraint, and is constantly amazed to discover, in what he regards as important sentences, all the characters that make up the name of
> Vladimir Nabokov, and sometimes Sirin as well. Such acronyms and lipograms are valid √ if that word can denote a contractual recognition between author,
> reader and other readers √ if they operate according to some system that excludes random replication of results. I astonish myself to notice that the last five
> words of the previous sentence form an acronym of their verdict on Shapiro▓s procedure; and that of the last six, the acronym expresses a likely consequence
> of hypogrammatic paranoia. On alphabetical iconicism, on the V and X and W that wing their way through the Nabokovian text, Shapiro is considerably more
> persuasive.
>
>
> Maxim Shrayer▓s essay on Jewish questions in Nabokov▓s life and art treats a difficult subject with delicacy and tolerance; Leona Toker treats the dead without
> too much respect, and joins the opposition to the School of the Hereafter. Gennady Barabtarlo addresses with some success the problem that we always
> encounter: how to reconcile the fascination of details with any sort of schematic reading. An extremely suggestive paragraph on Nabokov▓s objections to
> Dostoevsky leads on to Julian Connolly▓s treatment of the topic. While Connolly▓s discussion is largely thematic, Barabtarlo outlines the possibilities of a
> generic resolution of the conflict: that, as Nabokov said in his lectures, Dostoevsky was in the wrong genre: ⌠He seems to have been chosen by the destiny of
> Russian letters to become Russia▓s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.■ This is not very different from Bakhtin▓s observation
> that Dostoevsky▓s novels are Menippean satires. Maurice Couturier tries altogether too hard to squeeze Pale Fire into the mould of a novel with a ⌠single
> authorial figure.■ One realizes yet again the problematic nature of literary genres within the Russian tradition: that Eugene Onegin is subtitled ⌠a novel in
> verse,■ while War and Peace is declared by its author not to be a novel at all.
>
>
> Couturier▓s consideration of attempts to ⌠monologize■ Pale Fire reminds me of another textual element, like ament, unmentioned by Boyd, and, as far as I
> know, by every other annotator of or commentator on Pale Fire. This is the name of Jakob Gradus▓ maternal uncle, as revealed by Kinbote in the commentary
> on [end of page 103] line 17: ⌠His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protestant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle (Roman
> Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business.■ Here are
> two obvious puns, and a more subtle one. Jakob, the nephew of Roman, invokes a ripple of Roman son of Jakob. Equally obviously, Roman Tselo is a novel
> that is complete, whole, integral, intact. The root tselo is present in the Russian word for kiss, tselovat▓: the word is not merely imitative like English ⌠kiss■ but
> contains the idea of unity, of making whole. In the uncle▓s name we may hear not only a complete novel but also a kissing novel, and we may understand a
> ⌠kissing-novel■ to be like a kissing-gate, a gate that swings within a narrow enclosure, in either position forming an unbroken fence. The OED gives a
> definition that is clear, illuminating, even momentarily dazzling: ⌠a small gate swinging in a U- or V-shaped enclosure.■
>
>
>